


Life Goes On

by Malorkai



Category: Masters of Sex
Genre: Background Character Death, Blood and Injury, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:06:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25045099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malorkai/pseuds/Malorkai
Summary: Deciding he deserved someone who loved him without getting anything out of it, Bill called off his wedding to Virginia.When he happens to run into you, a long-time friend in town visiting relatives, your easy conversations have lost none of their old familiarity. You went to work with him, and you fall back into a comfortable friendship with one another. When Bill learns about a shocking secret from the past, it drudges up emotions he can't ignore.Ginny had left a deep mark on his heart, and the progress he had made in opening himself up to someone had regressed again. It's going to take a lot of love and patience to help Bill find the path to healing his soul before he fades away.
Relationships: William Masters/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Life Goes On

You had put on your coat and were just about to grab your purse when a choked and muffled keening from the study room caught your attention.  _ Odd,  _ you thought – Bill was to be returning from a conference today, but he wasn’t supposed to be coming back to the office. Turning your head, you listened for a moment. When you didn’t hear it again, you grabbed your purse and headed for the door.

You were on the other side of the doorway and guiding the door back into its’ frame, when you heard it once more, followed by a great shattering sound.

You threw your purse back on the desk as you hurried past it and through the door into the observation room.

“What on Earth – “

The room was mostly dark but for the lights of the testing equipment and the light from the lobby, but it was enough to light up the outline of a large hole on one side of the two-way mirror, and illuminate the plentiful shards of glass on the floor. You paused a few steps into the room, listening again.

Shuddering and clearly painfully stifled breathing were coming from just inside the actual study room.

“Dr. Masters?” Your voice had not begun to fade before you heard the clipped end of the breathing in the other room. Before you could convince yourself otherwise, you walked the rest of the ten or so steps into the other room and stopped by the small table just to the left.

You take a deep breath that you disguise by shrugging off your jacket and placing it on the table. Letting go of the breath and your nerves, you turn around to face the room. The lighting in here was not much better, though the mechanical colors were now able to filter into the room through the new hole in the mirror. Your eyes sweep the floor slowly, noticing each of the relatively few shards of glass up to where they scattered around the unsettlingly small form of your boss, sitting with his knees drawn to his chest and hands clasped over his face.

The sight nearly broke you then, and it became no easier once your eyes began adjusting to the low light of the space and could distinguish the dark color of blood on the floor from the glass around it.

“Bill? I—” you cut yourself off with a small sigh. You honestly didn’t know what to say. So, you take a seat on the corner of the bed, facing the mirror and attempting to give him privacy by looking at the break in the glass again.

You’d known Bill awhile now. You know he made the hole in that mirror.

Hell, you aren’t even surprised by it.

What really has you perplexed is the shrunken, gasping man curled into himself not two yards away that you are desperately trying not to stare at. Bill was volatile at the best of times, and when he was upset, well – the evidence of that lay in the shards between the two of you. You had come to expect screaming, cursing, drinking – sure; but not this. This was something all together different.

Your eyes slammed shut and your eyebrows came together as you heard a sharp, broken inhale to your left. It sounded so fragile and so unlike anything you’d ever heard from him before. Deciding on just taking a chance, you abandon your seat on the corner of the bed, and quickly close the gap between the two of you, spinning and sliding down the wall to sit with not a hand’s length between you.

Silent for a moment, you only sit there near him, anxiously fighting the urge to comfort him with the knowledge that he needs his space. Listening to each painfully brief inhale, as he struggled to force down whatever emotions within him that had managed surface, had your heart in pieces. Feeling your own familiar brand of panic beginning to rise within you, your hand reaches out for something tangible to hold onto; and lands on Bill’s upper arm, giving a gentle squeeze.

Your eyes went wide, and his muscle tensed under your grip.

_ Too late to go back now,  _ supplied your utterly unhelpful brain after betraying you into this in the first place. Alas, you were right, may as well go for broke.

When you finally managed to look at Bill, the last pieces from your heart turned to ash and fluttered away.

His right hand had several cuts running from his knuckles past his wrist, which had bled down his arm and soaked into his white undershirt. You sent a silent prayer to anything listening that they weren’t deep enough to cause him any permanent damage.

Releasing your grip on his arm, you shift yourself so that you face him with your right thigh touching his. You reach out your arm towards his unhurt wrist, and place your hand there, not pulling, but just laying it there for a moment. When he doesn’t immediately flinch or pull away, you gently pull towards you only to have him reach out with his bloodied hand to stop you while managing to hide his face in the hand remaining.

“Don’t—” he was unsteady; you could hear it in his voice as much as feel it in his grasp, “—please?” Relenting and letting him hide away for now, you release your grip but pull his injured arm toward you instead. When he tries to pull away your other arm grabs the back of his bicep, holding the position of his arm extended in front of you.

The glistening, still gently flowing blood from the cuts had coated the entire back of his forearm to the elbow in what appeared to be black in the dim lighting. “Jesus Christ, Bill,” you sighed freely, leaning yourself over to better look at his arm. Two of the cuts were deep, running right along the top of the tendons of his hand that were easily seen in their shaky yet strong grip on your own arm that had not lessened.

Stinging in your eyes signaled the tears threatening to stream down your face. All hesitation you previously held about comforting him went out the window. Emboldened, you let your head drop to where it was nearly resting on your joined arms, and lightly pressed your lips to his bloodied knuckles. You held yourself there for a moment before looking back up at him. His head was ducked low, nearly all his face hidden by his knees, with what wasn’t covered still by his other hand.

Drawing up your knees and moving closer to him, you fold both of your arms together into your chest, locking them there. faces less than a foot apart, you take your other hand and slowly lay it on his shoulder where his neck meets his shoulder. When he remains unchanged, you slide your hand up, slowly moving your fingers through the thick hair at the nape of his neck, “Bill, look at me,” you waited a few moments, sighing when he didn’t move. “Bill, please,” your voice cracked as a few tears escaped your eyes, running hot down your cheeks. You ducked your head, foolishly not wanting Bill to see you upset, especially in this situation, and tears dropped onto your entwined arms.

He quickly pulled in a deep breath, and you looked up when you felt him shift. On his face you saw his usual mask, but it was broken, brittle, the naked face of his anguish glaring through the cracks. Tears glistened over his eyes and fell freely down his face, leaving silvery trails behind them highlighting swollen and broken skin beneath. Your hand slid from his nape to the side of his face, thumb gently stroking his temple. He gently leaned into it, and the corner of his lip quirked upwards in the beginnings of a smile before abruptly vanishing, like it had never happened.

“Bill, what happened?” The hand still gripping your wrist curled tighter, and fresh blood trickled down your arm.

“Ah—” he rasped and coughed, wincing as he did. “I, uh, got into it with someone at the hotel last night. Well,” he coughed a few more times, “early this morning anyways.”

“Why, Bill? I thought you were moving past getting into fights with random strangers at hotel bars.”

His lips now quirking into a ghostly smile, he chuckles lightly, “He wasn’t exactly random. He was an old ‘colleague’ of mine, actually, when I was first starting the practice at Washington. Roger Whitehall – an obstetrician.” His head fell away from your hand and made a soft thud as it hit the wall. His eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling. “I was his wife’s doctor. They had been trying for a child for so long…” new tears filled in his eyes and stuck in his lower lashes as he tried to blink them away. “When they finally conceived – when I tell you I’ve never seen a happier couple. Being around them was near sickening, they were so in love. He waited on her hand and foot; he would’ve moved the moon for her.” He closed his eyes and a genuine smile passed over his face, even as tears began to fall in earnest.

“Every test I ran came back well-within normal, she never had any complaints, the whole pregnancy went as smoothly as any I’ve ever seen. Textbook.” His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip, lingering for a moment as he took a shuddering, deep breath through his nose before continuing.

“When she went into labor, everything was still perfect, every reading, the happy parents-to-be; the entire staff at Washington was buzzing with excitement.” At this, his eyes pinched together harder, forcing more tears from them. “Halfway through the labor, the fetal heartrate plummeted and went erratic. The umbilical cord had prolapsed, and the fetus wasn’t getting enough oxygen.” His breathing picked up further, as he went on, “We rushed into an emergency caesarean, and every obstetrician and doctor from the department packed themselves into the observation room. Hell, Barton was the one backing me in the surgery.”

Your other hand had come up to the arm that was entwined with yours and had been lightly tracing patterns through the hair on his forearm while he talked. Your own tears had been silently falling with his as you listened. “We did everything we could, and the baby survived, but he had been deprived of oxygen for too long; caused him to develop some profoundly serious mental disabilities. He was perfectly healthy otherwise, and you couldn’t have asked for a child with a sweeter temperament. They named him Robert—Robby—after his mother’s father.”

A heavy sigh fell from him as his head came forward, staring off into the distance, to something beyond the room. “Roger, he – he changed after that. For the first few years after, it just seemed like normal first-time parent behavior. Tired, grumpy, on edge and sleep deprived. But Robby was always happy and bright at appointments. Sure, he could throw a tantrum, but that’s just the same with any child.” His voice was dull, uninflected. “But then, as Robby got older, his body progressed, and his mind… It never developed past four or five years old.”

You felt tremors beginning to build up in his body, heard his breathing quicken.

“They—they started acting strangely. Stopped coming to visit the hospital, stopped coming to work functions, Libby said she had heard they were getting their groceries delivered straight to the house. The few times anyone saw her, she was said to have panicked and managed to avoid interaction completely. The one time in nine years they both accompanied Roger to a dinner—it had been the first time I’d seen Robb since he was six…I managed to talk with him for a few minutes without Roger around. He was still very much the same child, same interests and obsessions. But he was dulled, wouldn’t even look at me when he spoke. Thought he was going to faint when his dad came over to usher him away from me.”

His breathing had become completely erratic, and had your hand not gone mostly numb by now, the increase in pressure from his grip would likely have hurt. “Not a week later they found Robby and his mom—dead in their house. They’d both been beaten to death in what was  **reported** to be some sick home invasion.” A tight grimace pulled at his face and he slammed his head back against the wall, with a crack that made your teeth hurt and mouth fill with saliva. “We all let—none of us thought—someone shou— **I** should have known. If I had s-said something o-or talked to Scully, to  **anyone** —” His hand suddenly released your arm and was joined by his other hand in pulling at his hair. A deep moan tore free from his chest, carrying in it some great, unbearable sorrow.

Watching Bill’s suffering feels like a new cruelty with every moment; each breath he drew too shallow to properly reach his lungs, leaving his chest heaving uselessly with the effort. Tears were coursing openly down his face and he made no attempts to stop them, his hands still tangled in the thick hair at the back of his head.

Without thinking, you reach forward with both hands to his shoulders and slowly gather him close, his forehead coming to rest just above your clavicle. You hold him there close to you, feeling his uneven breathing on through your shirt, and the warmth soaking through from his tears. “Bill…” you shift to open yourself up and draw him closer to you, using your hands to gently coax him into letting go of his hair.

When you finally have him tucked tightly against you, you start rubbing his back in large, slow circles while you cradle his head to your chest. You focus on keeping your breathing even and begin to hum a melody you often had stuck in your head.

Sitting there trying to soothe the trembling man wrapped protectively in your arms, you have a moment for your brain to catch up with all that he has told you.

_ The story was tragic, but it isn’t like Bill to have a reminder of the loss of a patient work him up like this, even if theirs was clearly more than just the usual doctor-patient relationship. Why did seeing this old acquaintance lead to an eruption of this much turmoil from him? _

Thoughts were put together and torn apart and then linked again in your mind before you have a chance to dwell on any of them for long. Bill’s breathing seemed to have calmed down some, enough that not every breath sounded like it took everything he had.

You reached down to the hem of his shirt and let your hand rub over his bare back, letting your fingers lazily drag over his warm skin. When at last you felt some of the tension melt away from his body, you looked down at him. His eyes had closed, and while his face was still swollen from crying, the lines of anguish had smoothed out. You combed your fingers through his long hair, attempting to tame it from Bill’s recent attack. He’d managed to get blood into it, which made it a bit matted, but somehow it was still quite fluffy.

Not wanting the both of you to spend all night on the hard floor, you realize the two of you are going to have to get up. Sighing as you look down at him and hate yourself for needing to interrupt what is clearly a long-needed moment of peace. You brush an errant strand of hair from his forehead back into his mane, and you hear a soft sound leave him and he lightly pushes his head up into your hand. “Bill, let’s get moved to the bed, okay? You can’t spend all night down here on the floor. Besides, we really should look at your arm.”

He turned his head and mumbled something into you.

You chuckled, “I’m sorry Bill, what was that?”

“What’s wrong with the floor?”

Your eyes nearly rolled all the way back into your head, “What’s wrong with the floor is that it is cold, and hard, and I don’t fancy the both of us sitting here all night and regretting it for the rest of the week.”

He rolled a little to look up at you, and then sighed, “Fine.”

You helped each other up off the floor and you got him sitting on the edge of the bed. You turn to grab a few supplies from just on the other side of the glass, when something tugging your shirt stops you.

“Don’t leave, please?” He looked up at you with his eyes, his head still held low, like a child ashamed of asking his mom to stay after a nightmare.

You fully turned to him and placed your hand on his jaw, gently lifting him to meet your gaze, “I will not leave you, Bill. As long as you want me to stay, I will, I promise. But I need to go get some things to clean you up, okay? I promise I’ll be right back.” He closed his eyes and leaned into your touch, a lone tear falling from the corner of his eye as he nodded.

You lean forward and place a kiss on the top of his head. “I’ll be right back.”

You turned away without looking, knowing you’d be trapped if you looked into those eyes again right now. And he desperately needed to at least get cleaned up and looked over.

You went to gather the few supplies you’d need that weren’t in the observation area, trying to be out of sight for as little time as possible.

While gathering antiseptic and some sutures, there was a pervasive thought eating away at you.

You’d known Bill for quite a long time. Since college. And you knew him.

_ You know there is only one thing that haunts him in this way. _


End file.
